SPORTS FLASHBACK 1965: Deer and hunters are plentiful in Southeast

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/11/2023 (811 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An explosion in the deer population in eastern Saskatchewan allowed hunters to each take two deer during the fall hunting season this year and that is exactly what a group of eight Steinbach hunters did on a three-day hunting trip to the neighboring province.

The situation was similar in this province. where most of the 1,000 hunters to invade the Southeastern Manitoba woods this fall were reported to have shot their deer before the season closed Tuesday.

This year, the fall deer season saw a greatly increased kill over last year, when hunters were limited to shooting bucks only. The 1965 hunting season was open to all adult deer, because there was an abundance of female deer. An extremely mild winter and the very few number of forest fires this summer contributed to an explosion in the deer population for this season.

Some hunters said they believed there were still more deer left at the end of the hunting season this year, despite the increased kill, than there were after last year when hunters enjoyed only limited success.

Evidence of the high deer population is the number that have been killed by trains and vehicles during the fall mating season, which just ended. A CNR train-man reported hitting seven deer in seven days in the Woodridge and Carrick areas. Another six were killed by trains in the Marchand area and at least as many were reported killed on roads and highways as were killed on the railway.

Local hunters expressed the opinion that about 75 percent of all the hunters hunting in the Southeast were from the area, while the remainder were mostly from Winnipeg.